After years of prolonged financial problems, I had to accept that I could no longer ignore the repetition of these problems in my life. The crises in my life eventually served as catalysts to understand that I needed to make different choices to engage higher perspectives. In reading self-help and personal growth books, I began to understand that, when there is a recurring problem, such as the financial hardship we experienced, the underlying messages want to be revealed. They will make a continuous, unyielding effort to get our attention. The opportunity that lies within crisis is for you to be willing to look closely and identify the underlying patterns and messages in what is happening around you.
In the prolonged crisis, reading the books I read and listening to inspirational talks encouraged me to be still and quiet in order to allow the deeper messages to make themselves known. It was from this humble beginning that I actively began to participate in what would become my saving grace: going within to seek clarity through meditation and prayer.
Throughout the turmoil, it wasn’t easy. With continual highs and lows, I began to tire of listening to myself whine and complain. Although I was scared and I wanted answers, I didn’t want to continue to discuss our situation with family and friends. With no money to pay for therapy or counseling, it seemed the only place left for me to go was within. So I did.
During my meditations, in addition to periods of silence after prayer, I began to ask questions to solicit clarity and guidance into my awareness. As I posed questions during a meditative state, I began to notice answers would indeed come into my awareness. However, as soon as the meditation session was over, I forgot the guidance which came into my awareness. The only way to remember would be to write it down. It was at that time that I decided to bring a large pad and pen to my meditation and prayer sessions. At the start of the meditation, I would first pray, then move into a period of sustained silence. After getting comfortable for several minutes of complete silence, I was more relaxed, and thoughts that continued to hover would begin to fade. With my eyes closed, I would then say the following:
“I call upon my Higher Self to join me in my meditation. During this meditation, I ask that you protect me from any and all vibrations, energies, frequencies and communications in all directions of time past, present, and future, that are not of love, light, and the highest good. Please let this communication be clear. Let the answers be communicated to me in a way that is easy for me to understand. Please let me feel your loving energy when you are ready to begin. I thank you in advance for your presence.”
For more than a year, I sat down in a meditative state to ask questions to help me mentally and emotionally navigate the difficult and uncertain times I faced. The guidance I recorded helped me to move through difficult and unsettling times with comforting reassurance that I am deeply loved, there is no need to be afraid, and I am not alone. The guidance I received, however, did not provide the answers I wanted. My posed questions and concerns were continual attempts to address the immediate unfavorable conditions which surrounded me. The guidance, however, provided the larger context of what was happening in my life and the higher messages that sought to make themselves known.
In the beginning, when I felt anxiety surrounding the outcome of a situation, I utilized my spiritual practice for a “save me please” answer. I wanted someone, something, anything to tell me what to do, to whom I should speak and what I should say. For a long period of time, I wanted to be rescued. I didn’t want to do the “heavy lifting” of looking at what was underneath. In the beginning, when I began to ask for guidance, those times were no different. I didn’t want anything vague. I wanted the final answer in the form of a deeply fulfilling (and immediate) job. However, that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
What is important to understand is that, for years, fear dominated my responses, choices, reactions, conversation, and movement throughout my life. I was consistently afraid that some event would occur that we would not be able to financially handle. Eventually it did. For a prolonged period of time, we could to not afford to live anywhere. We could not pay our bills. It was an unyielding struggle which took a toll on every aspect of our life. Before establishing a consistent meditation practice, I constantly felt threatened by a looming financial disaster. My nerves “lived” in fight-or-flight mode from the endless anxiety I created.
In the midst of this silent struggle, I turned within to be able to make it through each day. I knew I could either continue to do things as I always have, or take a chance of trusting my intuition and absorbing what the moment was trying to teach me. Life is not always linear, pretty, and clear. Sometimes you have to step outside of the box, especially when you’re being pulled out of the box. With this in mind, I continued to meditate. Meditation grew to become the most practical, accessible, and effective way I found to calm myself of the anxiety-ridden thoughts that propelled me.
Let’s be clear, meditation did not immediately remove any situation from my life. That’s not what it does. Although mediation can be a powerful tool for personal growth, it is not a quick fix. What it did was help me establish, and strengthen, my practice as a way to move through the conundrum of situational difficulties with greater ease and trust, and a sense of growing empowerment. There were deeply held unconscious beliefs that were unknowingly contributing to the problems in my life; meditation helped to bring these unconscious beliefs to the surface to be consciously addressed and released.
Here are the three levels of the mind that influence our lives:
1.The conscious mind is everything you are aware of and thinking about.
2.The subconscious mind consists of accessible information you can become aware of once you direct your attention to it; memory recall.
3.The unconscious mind includes unconscious beliefs, patterns, feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that are outside of our conscious awareness where information is hidden and stored. Most of these contents are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict, which trigger automatic reactions according to stored memories.
Within each of us there is also a higher part that goes beyond our conscious awareness. This Higher Self always has access to and communicates with a higher, more expansive and intelligent Divine Consciousness that some refer to as God, the I AM Presence or something else. The Higher Self is the highest expression of your individual connection with the Divine Consciousness. It is greater than our conscious everyday self. It is part of you, yet more than you. It is in and of itself a part of the Divine Consciousness. Within the practice of quieting the mind and connecting with your Higher Self, you can access unconscious information from the highest part of yourself that is out of your conscious awareness.
Meditation is the “doorway” through which I was able to quiet my mind and access unconscious information from my Higher Self. Through meditation, higher information can be brought into our conscious awareness to identify the best course of action towards the highest outcome.
Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness, or of being aware of something within oneself; it is your experience of awareness. By establishing a sincere and inquisitive connection with my Higher Self, I made myself available to receive help, to have a glimpse of what is possible through states of higher consciousness and essentially grow through challenges.
During this time of ongoing meditation, I still had moments of feeling afraid of what could go wrong. However, little by little, fear played a less significant role in my life. It took several years, in fact, of deeply sincere and active participation in meditation, prayer, introspection, and study to no longer be ruled by fear and self-sabotaging patterns. Simply put, I had a lot of “unlearning” to do. I had to make an effort to uncover the hidden parts of myself which kept me attached to financial disarray and problematic situations. Every time I sat down in silence to meditate and connect with my Higher Self, I knew I was not alone, my efforts to become a better expression of myself were not in vain, and my intentions were held in grace.
I began to notice the ways in which meditation helped me to become aware of the